Matt Sherlock
Matt
Sherlock is a project design engineer in the Marine Instrumentation
group at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. His days are spent
designing and building sophisticated electronics and software
for a variety of projects in support of the research programs
within the Division.
Matt has been working in the Marine Instrumentation Group of
CSIRO for about 17 years. He has spent much of that time managing
and developing the electronics equipment and facilities used for
research on Southern Surveyor, from the time it was originally
purchased by the Division in the late 80's until it became the
Marine National Facility vessel in 2002.
Matt has participated in more than 40 research voyages the majority
of which have been on Southern Surveyor and has experienced sea
conditions ranging from the balmy tropical in the Gulf of Carpenteria
to the howling gales of the Southern Ocean.
Perhaps Matt's most memorable trip was when he lost a portion
of one of his fingers during recovery of a towed body system with
the vessel half way to Macquarie Island. His biggest concern was
that a seagull hadn't spotted the juicy morsel on the aftdeck
and absconded before a search party was sent out to recover it.
Fortunately the piece was found and successfully reattached with
a few stitches. It had a size 11 Blundstone boot print on it,
which luckily did fade away!
The excitement of his job comes from using cutting edge technology
to build scientific instruments that operate under extreme conditions.
The design challenges for the instruments Matt works on include
low power, high pressure and cold temperatures at oceans depths
and the need for reliability and robustness. In recent years the
push to understand the characteristics of the ocean bottom and
how it supports the cycle of undersea life has seen his involvement
in the development of a variety of undersea camera systems which
allow the bottom to be viewed in real time from the relative comfort
of the vessel. There is always excitement, seeing for the first
time places deep under the ocean that have never been visited
before or illuminated by light.
During this voyage Matt's primary role is to operate and maintain
a new underwater camera system that has just been developed by
the marine technology and equipment group within the division.
The system was designed, developed and built by a team in the
that included mechanical and electronics engineers, electronics
technicians and precision machinists. The system will be towed
behind the vessel at slow speed and is essentially 'flown' just
meters above the bottom using a 3 kilometer rmoured optic fiber
cable. The operator monitors the live video feeds from the system
and uses a joystick to control the tow cable winch and hence the
position of the camera platform above the bottom. The system is
capable of working to a depth of 2000 meters capturing high-resolution
video and digital still photographs of the seabed.
The video data captured from the system provides a vital component
in understanding the makeup of the benthic habitat. It will be
used to ground truth the backscatter information collected by
the vessels swath acoustic system thereby allowing large scale
habitat maps to be produced.
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Updated:
29/03/07
